Intel plotting vPro for Apple

New business platform coming soon to a Mac near you

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Intel's brand new vPro desktop platform started shipping in business PCs yesterday and could already be on its way for Macs.

At the launch of the Core 2 Duo-based chipset yesterday in Antwerp, Intel digital office division general manager Greg Bryant said plans were being discussed to bring the Advanced Manageability Technologies at the heart of the vPro to Apple machines. We'll know one way or the other within 18 months, probably once they've sorted out how to punt the technology to laptop buyers.

The timing of the PC vPro push would have originally been timed to coincide with an even bigger launch. Bryant claimed there was "no hard dependency" between the vPro and Vista, while admitting the plan had been for vPro to become "the best platform for Vista".

He laughed off suggestions of Intel groans at Microsoft's repeated failure to meet its own deadlines.

Intel is hoping to ride a power consumption hype wave with the vPro, which it reckons is just starting to permeate through business. It's hoping the branding will be its way in to this market, the way Centrino was with mobile.

Virtualisation will be another area Intel's marketeers will hammer IT buyers with as they flog vPro. Bryant said they had bitten off "a manageable chunk" in terms of the plot to get the industry to buy into virtualisation, but conceded there was still a way to go.

One of Intel's partner's claimed its vPro trial had reduced IT support call outs by as much as 95 per cent with the raft of new on-motherboard security, management, and maintainance features.

Given your average sys admin is already subjected to Howard Hughesian levels of enforced basement hermitism, we have to wonder whether the new chipset's claimed IT budget-slashing capabilities will be countered by sky-rocketing workplace shooting insurance premiums. ®